Ahrefs Brand Radar Pricing (2026): Indexes, Prompt Checks, and Real Cost

Ahrefs Brand Radar starts at $199 USD per month for access to one AI-search index, while all-platform access costs $699 USD per month and includes 2,500 custom-prompt checks. Custom tracking adds $50 for 2,500 checks, $100 for 7,000, or $250 for 25,000; published overage rates are $0.020, $0.015, and $0.010 per check respectively. Prices were checked on September 26, 2026; currency is USD, and region or tax treatment may vary. The figures describe monthly billing as published, not an annual-discount quote.

This is a documentation-based buyer guide, not a hands-on review. AEOeye reviewed public pricing and product documentation; we did not run a paid account or measure product accuracy.

Brand Radar is relevant when your team needs to know whether AI systems mention, recommend, or cite a brand in buyer-style answers. The important purchasing distinction is that index access lets you work with an Ahrefs index, while custom tracking pays for additional prompt checks. They are related, but they are not interchangeable units.

Table of contents

• What does Ahrefs Brand Radar include?
• How is Brand Radar priced?
• What is the difference between index access and custom tracking?
• How do custom checks and overage work?
• Which Brand Radar plan fits an AEO workflow?
• What should you verify before buying?
• Frequently asked questions

What does Ahrefs Brand Radar include?

Brand Radar is Ahrefs’ product for monitoring brand visibility across AI-search environments. Ahrefs describes it through its Brand Radar overview and explains setup and usage in its official help article. The practical goal is to turn recurring buyer questions into a visibility baseline: where a brand appears, which competitors are named, and which sources an answer engine uses.

That makes the product adjacent to, but different from, a conventional rank tracker: Brand Radar inspects language, recommendations, and cited sources in AI answers rather than only positions for known keywords.

How is Brand Radar priced?

The cleanest way to read the pricing is to separate the fixed index-access decision from the variable custom-check allowance. The following table summarizes the published figures reviewed on September 26, 2026.

The Ahrefs pricing page is the final place to confirm the amount shown for your account, location, taxes, billing cadence, and any plan eligibility. Ahrefs may change packaging or introduce product-specific terms; this guide records the public schedule available on the date above rather than treating it as a permanent contract.

What is the difference between index access and custom tracking?

Index access determines which Brand Radar data environment you can use. Custom tracking determines how many prompt checks your team can run against the tracking workflow. Buying a broader index does not automatically mean unlimited monitoring, and buying checks does not by itself create access to every index.

How do custom checks and overage work?

The published custom-tracking schedule lists $50 for 2,500 checks, $100 for 7,000, and $250 for 25,000. Its corresponding overage rates are $0.020, $0.015, and $0.010 per additional check. The unit is a check, not a keyword, team member, report, or month of access.

Claude custom checks need special care: Ahrefs’ documentation says that one Claude custom check consumes eight checks. A team estimating capacity should convert model-specific usage into the billing unit before selecting a tier. Otherwise, a seemingly small prompt list can consume an allowance eight times faster than expected.

Here is a reproducible scenario using the published rules. Assume a team buys all-platform access for $699 per month, adds the Growth custom-tracking tier for $100, and runs 1,000 Claude custom checks in the month:

1. 1,000 Claude checks × 8 billing checks each = 8,000 consumed checks.
2. The Growth allowance is 7,000 checks.
3. Excess usage is 8,000 − 7,000 = 1,000 checks.
4. At the published Growth overage rate of $0.015, overage is 1,000 × $0.015 = $15.
5. Estimated monthly total is $699 + $100 + $15 = $814.

The arithmetic is transparent; the exact invoice still depends on how Ahrefs applies the allowance, product packaging, taxes, and account-specific terms. Confirm those details before committing.

Ahrefs notes that beta indexes are free on a paid plan until the beta ends; treat that access as temporary.

Which Brand Radar plan fits an AEO workflow?

Choose the smallest setup that answers your operational question, then expand when your prompt library proves its value. One index at $199 may suit a focused team; all-platform access at $699 is the broader starting point, but its allowance still needs to be reconciled with prompt volume.

Custom tracking is most useful when you can name the checks you will repeat. Build a small inventory first:

• brand/category questions where the company hopes to be recommended;
• competitor and alternative questions where omission would matter;
• markets, languages, and personas that change the answer;
• the cadence needed to detect a meaningful change.

For context, AEOeye’s AI visibility tracker explains why repeated measurements need stable prompts and explicit comparison rules. The AEO audit checklist is useful for connecting visibility observations to fixable content, entity, and citation work. Pricing alone cannot tell you whether a monitoring program will produce a decision.

If you are comparing Brand Radar with other tools, keep the units consistent: a subscription price, an index, a prompt check, and an answer citation are different things. See AEOeye’s guides to Semrush AI Visibility pricing and Geneo pricing for the same buyer-first lens.

What should you verify before buying?

Ask Ahrefs to confirm five items in writing for your account: which indexes are included, how the 2,500 all-platform checks are allocated, how Claude usage is counted, when overage begins, and whether beta-index access can change during the billing period. Also confirm whether your team’s intended region introduces tax or currency differences.

Then run a capacity estimate using your own prompt list: multiply Claude checks by eight, add the rest, and compare the result with 2,500, 7,000, or 25,000.

This guide does not claim that Brand Radar is accurate, comprehensive, or better than another platform; those performance questions require a documented hands-on test. The pricing conclusion is narrower: index access combines with metered custom checks, and Claude usage can materially change the effective allowance.

Frequently asked questions

Is Ahrefs Brand Radar $199 or $699 per month?

Both figures are published options with different scope. Single-platform access is $199 per month per index; all-platform access is $699 per month and includes 2,500 custom-prompt checks. Confirm the exact package displayed for your account.

Are Brand Radar checks the same as keywords?

No. A check is a custom-prompt usage unit in the tracking workflow. It should not be treated as a keyword, report, seat, or citation. Claude custom checks consume eight checks under the published rules.

What would all-platform plus Growth cost?

The stated base is $699 + $100 = $799 per month before overage. If 1,000 Claude checks consume 8,000 checks, 1,000 exceed the 7,000-check Growth allowance; at $0.015 each, the example overage is $15, for an estimated $814 monthly total.

Are beta indexes permanently free?

No. Ahrefs says beta indexes are free on a paid plan until the beta ends. Treat that as temporary access and verify the current terms before using it in a long-term budget.

Want a quick visibility baseline first?

Before purchasing recurring monitoring, run a free AEOeye ChatGPT visibility snapshot. It gives you a concrete starting question—whether your brand appears in a buyer-style AI answer—so you can decide which platforms, prompts, and cadence are worth paying to track.